European Initiative: Vote to protect our natural home.
Petition the European Parliament to recognise ecocide as a crime.
Every voice counts!
- Fracking pollutes ground water, soil and air and threatens human health for the sake of profit and fossil fuel extraction which when burned even aggravate climate change. Is this fair?
- Rosia Montana, Rumania: foreign companies are planning to mine gold, silver and other resources by means of Open Pit Mining. Within the next 10 years 130,000 tons cyanide are planned to be used to extract the precious metals, leaving large amounts of highly toxic soil and water behind.
- The situation of the seas is severe: Estimates indicate that almost 50 percent of the fish population in European waters is overfished, constituting a severe threat to marine ecosystems and our food security
- Even 25 years later, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl still affects the life of young and old. Thyroid cancer is one of the most common diseases people in the impacted area suffer from. The UN estimates that 7 million people, unable to afford relocation, still live on land contaminated radioactively by the explosion.
- Hungary, October 2010: The dam of the Ajka Alumina plant collapses. Up to one million cubic meters of highly caustic red mud are released and spread on 40 square kilometers around the aluminium plant.
- At the open pit mine Hambach, Germany, with an area of 85km2 and a depth of 450m, 40 million tons of lignite are produced annually. It is mainly used at the Niederaußem plant, the largest CO2 issuer in Europe, to produce electricity. Until 2040 approximately 5.200 people will be displaced due to the mine. In addition, the old forest of Hambach, with a size of 4.100 hectare and an age of 12.000 years, will be almost completely destroyed.
- Mavrovo National Park, Macedonia, one of Europe’s last big hotspots of biodiversity; Above: Radika River before construction works for the new hydropower plant; Below: situation during the construction period, where river falls almost completely dry. When in operation, the reservoir will inundate an area up to 1.5 square kilometers, and most of the discharge will be diverted through channels for power production; The river represents the only source of the drinking water for local residents as well as for wildlife.
- Europe’s last pristine forests in the Romanian Carpathians are currently beeing cut down. They are processed into furniture or are directly converted into wood chips to heat people’s homes. Since 1990 aproximately 366.000 hectares of protected forests have been cleared illegally, an area almost half the metropolitan area of London.
- More than 80% of all plants - in particular those providing food for us - worldwide are pollinated by insects. Without bees up to three fourths of the current harvest could be lost. In the last decades between 50% and 70% of all bees in Europe and North America have been killed. Welcome to a world of scarcity.
- Continuous oil spills pollute the Niger Delta and threaten people, their livelihoods and health as well as the habitat and life of flora and fauna. Even 50 years after oil extraction has begun no major actor has been held liable for the spills and their consequences.
The pollution and destruction of our environment, as well as the depletion of natural ressources are progressing fast and without restraint. Extensive damage or destruction of ecosystems is calledecocide.
All life on earth, our peaceful co-existence and our own well-being depends on intact ecosystems. Nature provides the necessary resources and our natural environment. We should value and protect this generous gift.
That’s why we request that crimes against nature be recognised as crime. We request direct liability for decision-makers in politics and business, as well as companies responsible for ecocide.
You can help to make that happen
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- If you want to sign in as a legal entity (association or NGO Chairman), thank you to send an email to: corinne.lepage @ europarl.europa.eu
[translated from French]
Charter of Brussels
For the creation of a European Criminal Court and an International Criminal Court of the Environment and Health
Considering the inalienable human right to a healthy environment and the risk of irreversibility the level reached by the loss of biodiversity.
The initiators parts:
Recall and emphasize the principles and content of all international resolutions and international declarations since the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on Environment, adopted at Stockholm June 16, 1972;
Recognize that the issues transcend borders and must be treated supranational;
Argue that the issue of excessive use of resources is that of damage or destruction of ecosystems whose operation allows the maintenance and development of life, as evidenced by the disappearance of many plant and animal species that human health is endangered by the use of toxic products and especially endocrine disruptors and carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins;
Observed that various initiatives aimed at providing a constitutional preservation of living (such as, for example, the new Constitutional Charter of Ecuador, the Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio y los Derechos Climático de la Madre Tierra - Cochabamba, the Environmental Charter in France);
Emphasize the extreme urgency to act;
Fall within such a perspective requires the study and evaluation of historical, anthropological and cultural, scientific, health, economic and political;
Therefore consider that these data must have legal translation to allow the preservation of the environment with effective, proportionate and dissuasive, in effect, some choices and decisions, made knowingly, result in dramatic consequences short and long-term resources, nature and humans it is therefore important to recognize effective access to justice;
Note that today there are many initiatives and shape of various types carried by themselves and other organizations that would join and they serve a similar purpose with different but complementary methods and likely to implement more or less rapidly, it is necessary to find solutions and the most appropriate tools to act together and allow the immediate implementation of what can be and to coordinate efforts to achieve the best possible outcome for each initiative.
As a result, they decided to meet to discuss the following
- Immediately, all existing or planned initiatives for civil society to seize and judge at least morally responsible for the crimes and environmental crimes endangering the planet’s resources and human health will be supported by all signatory organizations, it is particularly true of the International Court of awareness of crimes against nature and the environment, and the Tribunal of Peoples;
- A second historical point could be reached by the creation of a European CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH; Following the hearing, July 10, 2010, by the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee European, Professor Abrami, vice-president of the International Academy of Environmental Sciences, the Political Department “Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Case” DG Internal Policies of the EU Parliament issued on comments1 this proposal that “the creation of a specialized chamber within the Court of Justice of the EU, or a specialized court attached to the court with jurisdiction over environmental issues, would be a realistic goal means terme.2 “; AME-DIE supported this initiative could result in a change in the status of the ECJ, the recognition of the need for criminal sanctions for environmental offenses (Directive 2008/99/EC) and the creation of a criminal prosecutor Europe could be considered a first step in this direction, strengthening sanctions and recognition of ecocide crime, requested by the citizen movement End Ecocide in Europe, are also part of this process;
- AN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT OF ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH is the ultimate goal. To achieve this, a revision of the statutes of the International Criminal Court (121,122 and 123 s) is possible by introducing environmental catastrophe as one of the offenses of crimes against humanity to prosecute officials who acted intentionally. This crime environmental disaster would provide effective international protection of ecosystems, in the spirit of precedents civil in nature from the International Court of Justice (Case Trail, conflict Corfu Channel) which results in a rule of international law customary that “no State has the right to use or permit that uses its own territory so as to cause damage,” reaffirmed the principle n.21 of the Stockholm Declaration of 1972 and in the n.2 principle of Rio de Janeiro from 1992;
The parties also follow with interest and some also support the creation of a new crime said of “ecocide” as a fifth crime against peace.
Accordingly, the parties initiating:
- Invite other organizations to support the request to create a European Criminal Tribunal for the Environment and Health on the basis of principles developed by the EU effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions;
- Invite interested organizations and beyond global civil society to support the request for the creation of an International Criminal Court of the Environment and Health in developing the current competence of the International Criminal Court (ICC) through procedures provided for in the Treaty (revision and amendments) and including such new specific crime, environmental catastrophe;
- Therefore, request the Secretary General of the UN to take any useful initiative to
- Identify different environmental emergencies Planet Earth with particular attention to the protection of health and the scientific and technological issues has erent well as all cultural and anthropological aspects?;
- Develop actions necessary for the creation of the International Criminal Court of the Environment and Health and the effective enforcement of environmental offenses causing harm to people as ecosystems;
- Invite interested organizations and civil society to support an initiative to recognize the United Nations, and the United States the polluter pays principle as a legal principle of universal value and punishable, repairing the environmental damage, introduce effective legal protection and judicial resources in a spirit of effective multilateralism and solidarity;
- In any case decide to organize a joint platform to pursue this goal and clear.
Please VOTE to End Ecocide at https://www.endecocide.eu where you also find more information